You Have No Idea

Writing is a form of personal freedom.  It frees us from the mass identity we see all around us.  In the end, writer will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves as individuals.

-Don DeLillo

I believe after having this quote as my computer background for half the school year, I finally realize the true meaning behind it.  Every human needs to escape from something, whether it is some part of reality or in their own mind.  We find different ways to hide or run from these things that haunt us, and the poor souls who can’t find a way to get away become so twisted and broken they might commit violent acts against themselves or others because they lose their sanity.  We know these people as sociopaths, and we usually criticize them or dam them to hell for what they did.  But the reality is that YOU DO NOT KNOW what has happened or what they have gone through or how twisted their mind is.  Some people break faster than other and are more present when they go over the edge, but others are so for gone, they’re not here at all; one cannot call them human.  Writers and artists are able to escape this end by creating a new word where their problems can’t find them – a place where they can live in peace and retreat to when their problem gets to close or crosses a border they have set.  We are able to find peace with a happy memory that we’ve magnified, an idea that we build into different things, or an entirely different world.  We find a way to escape; that’s all anyone tries to do in life.  Run.